The New NASCAR Chase Is Already Doing What the Playoffs Couldn't

Four races into the new championship format, every point matters, bad races actually hurt and nobody gets to win once and disappear for two weeks. That's a major improvement.

We spent years complaining about NASCAR's elimination playoffs.

Four races into the new Chase, it's getting harder to miss them.

That doesn't mean the current system is perfect. It doesn't mean every NASCAR fan suddenly agrees about how a champion should be determined. Even on our own show, we couldn't get everyone completely on the same page.

But Kansas reinforced something that's becoming increasingly difficult to ignore.

Every race matters again.

Kyle Larson entered The Chase in seventh place. Four races later, he has a 26-point championship lead after finishing fifth at Darlington, winning Gateway, finishing second at Bristol and absolutely destroying the field at Kansas.

Nobody reset his points after three races.

Nobody erased the work he did at Gateway and Bristol.

Nobody told him his Kansas performance only mattered enough to qualify him for another three-race mini-season.

He earned those points.

He kept them.

Now everybody else has to take them back.

That sounds incredibly simple because it is.

And that's why we like it.

The old elimination format certainly produced memorable moments. Ross Chastain's Martinsville wall ride probably doesn't happen without a cutoff race. Win-and-advance could turn the final restart into a Hail Mary. Several members of our show acknowledged that those moments were legitimately entertaining.

The problem was everything surrounding them.

A driver could win the opening race of a round and spend the next two weeks preparing for the following round. The final championship race eventually boiled down to four drivers effectively competing in their own event, where the only requirement was finishing ahead of the other three championship contenders.

We hated that part.

The Chase doesn't allow it.

Winning Kansas gave Larson 55 race points before even counting his stage sweep and fastest-lap bonus. That created a massive one-race swing. Hamlin finished third and scored 51 points — objectively a very good afternoon — yet still lost another 25 points to Larson because the No. 5 scored everything available.

That's pressure.

You can finish third and still leave thinking you didn't do enough.

Christopher Bell finished sixth and now sits 50 behind.

Logano won Bristol one week ago and suddenly finds himself 67 back after finishing 20th at Kansas.

Blaney finished fifth — fifth! — and is now 91 points behind the leader.

That's exactly what a championship format should do.

Reward greatness.

Punish bad days.

And make merely being good feel increasingly inadequate when somebody else goes on a tear.

During the podcast, one of the biggest discussions was whether the Chase could still produce the same drama as the elimination playoffs. The answer so far appears to be yes — it's simply a different kind of drama.

There may not be a graphic turning someone's name gray after every third race.

Instead, we're mentally eliminating them ourselves.

When a driver reaches 140 or 150 points behind with six races remaining, we don't need NASCAR to tell us he's in trouble.

We can do the math.

More importantly, those drivers aren't technically dead.

Talladega is still coming.

Martinsville is still coming.

A race victory carries an enormous points premium, and a disastrous finish by the leader can erase chunks of an advantage in one afternoon.

That's what keeps this from turning into a boring season-long points slog.

Our favorite part may be what happens if the championship remains close entering Homestead.

Under the old playoff system, if none of the Championship 4 drivers won the race, you simply watched to see which one crossed the finish line first.

Under this format, the math travels with them.

Imagine Larson entering Homestead 15 points ahead of Hamlin.

Hamlin wins Stage 1.

Larson finishes seventh.

Hamlin wins Stage 2.

Now the entire championship calculation changes before the final stage even starts.

Then add the 20-point difference between winning the race and finishing second.

That's significantly more interesting than simply highlighting four cars and saying, "Whichever one finishes first is the champion."

The biggest concern is obvious.

Larson could run away with it.

If he keeps producing races like Kansas, this thing might be effectively decided before Homestead.

You know what?

Good.

If Kyle Larson goes on a Tony Stewart-style heater and destroys everybody for 10 straight races, he should win the championship.

That's not a failure of the format.

That's somebody earning the damn thing.

Tony Stewart barely made the 2011 Chase, then won five of the final 10 races and became a champion. Nobody looks back at that run and complains there wasn't enough manufactured drama. They remember it because somebody got hot when it mattered and refused to lose.

Larson may be starting something similar.

Or Hamlin might answer.

Bell might start winning.

Blaney could make a run at his best tracks.

Talladega could blow the entire championship apart.

That's the beauty of it.

The Chase doesn't need to manufacture Game 7 moments every three weeks.

It just needs to make all 10 races matter.

So far, it does.